from Habeas Corpus downwards has been the inevitable result of a
failure to apply democratic principles of government. Jury-packing,
forbidden meetings, summary arrests and prosecutions, and police
reporters form a discreditable paraphernalia by which to maintain the
conduct of government.

As examples of the differential treatment meted out to Ireland which is
not of a nature to impress her with confidence in English methods may be
mentioned the fact that the Irish militia are drafted out of the country
for their training, that no citizen army of volunteers is permitted, and
the desire of one faction to preserve these discriminations is to be
seen in the anger with which was greeted the omission the other day of
the Irish Arms Act from the Expiring Laws Continuation Bill.

Under every bad government there arise popular organisations bred of the
wildness of despair which enjoy the moral sanction which the law has
failed to secure "When citizens," said Filangieri long ago, "see the
Sword of Justice idle they snatch a dagger." So long as the Government
sate on the safety valve, so long did periodic explosions of
revolutionary resentment arise, and one must appreciate the fact that in
a country so devoutly Catholic as is Ireland the natural conservatism
which attachment to an historic Church inculcates, and the direction on
its part of anathemas at secret societies and at violence, served to
make it more difficult by far to arouse revolutionary reprisals than it
would be in similar circumstances in England.

"When bad men combine," wrote Edmund Burke, "the good must associate,
else they will fall one by one an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible
struggle." No one can accuse Burke--the apostle of constitutionalism,
the arch-enemy of the French revolution--of condoning violence, but even
he admitted that there is a limit at which forbearance ceases to be a
virtue.

England must blame herself for the war of classes with which the
National struggle has been complicated. It was the Act of Union which
made the landlord class look to England, and established it in the
anomalous position of a body drawing its income from one country and its
support from another; by this means it made them a veritable English
garrison appealing to England as being the only loyal people. Let us
hope it is not true to say at this date that like the Bourbons they have
learnt nothing and forgotten nothing. The rich, the proud, and the
powerful ha